Author Archives: amycsmith

Classics students shine at UROP showcase

Posted on by

At the UROP Showcase this Wednesday, people from across the University and the wider community had the opportunity to learn about the work that 100+ students did as part of University of Reading’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme, aka UROP. Each of the selected students was paid for a 6-week experience conducting real research for academics from across the University’s four themes. The three Classics projects noted below, working within the Heritage & Creativity theme, received funding and recruited select first- and second-year students to work with them. At the showcase each UROP student presented a poster explaining their research projects and discussed the results with interested persons.

In the Company of Monsters: New Visions, Ancient Myths. Shona Carter-Griffiths (shown above) and Megan Davies worked with Profs. Emma Aston and Andrew Mangham (English) in preparation of the labels and text for their exhibition currently on display at the Reading Museum, which project uses contemporary visual art to investigate the power of ancient mythology to engage modern audiences and to explore contemporary themes of identity and diversity.

Athenian Festival ware in the Ure Museum Lorena Rodriguez-Tunon (shown right) collected and analyses examples in Reading’s Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology of black-figure ceramics created and used as festival ware in ancient Athens. This was a testbed for a larger project for which Prof. Amy Smith and her collaborator Dr Katerina Volioti (Roehampton) are currently seeking funding.

Public interactions with Lowbury Hill. Working with Summer Courts and Prof. Amy Smith on the Mymerian Project (https://research.reading.ac.uk/mymerian/), Georgia Spriggs (left) gathered, analysed, and interpreted trends in modern and contemporary public perceptions of the archaeology and history of Lowbury Hill, Oxfordshire, through research in archives and print media, in preparation of a journal article on the subject. Stay tuned for this and other outputs!

When we popped by the showcase we caught we caught Dr Sally Fletcher from the British Museum interrogating Shona and Megan, while Georgia was discussing her project with Janice Galvin from the Alumni Office: she was particularly interested in Georgia’s work on Lowbury Hill because this year the University Alumni funded Georgia’s work! We are very proud of grateful to our students and delighted that they all found their research work so fulfilling. The UROP calendar has just begun again and staff are encouraged to dream up exciting projects on which students might research in Summer 2024.

Véronique Dasen delivers the James E. Gordon Lecture

Posted on by
Prof. Dasen & Prof. Smith

Profs. Véronique Dasen (Gordon lecturer) and Amy Smith (Ure Curator)

On 16 October 2023, the Ure Museum was delighted to welcome Prof. Véronique Dasen from University of Fribourg to deliver the James E. Gordon Lecture. Professor Véronique Dasen is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Fribourg, Honorary Professor at the University of Lille, and Vice-President of the Conseil Scientifique Institut National d‘Histoire de l’Art, Paris. Her multidisciplinary research, which takes an anthropological perspective, concerns ancient iconography and material culture as it relates to the history of the body, medicine and of magical practices, gender studies, history of childhood and play as metaphor.

In her lecture, Play or cheat? Games in Greek and Roman antiquity, Prof. Dasen introduced and explained fascinating discoveries from her Locus Ludi project, funded by the European Research Council, 2017-22. Her lecture culminated with the launch of an exciting new video on ‘loaded’ Roman dice currently undergoing scientific analyses.

The annual Gordon lecture honours the memory of Professor James Edward Gordon (1913–1998), his interdisciplinary spirit and enthusiasm for the relevance of science to our understanding of the ancient world. Prof Gordon was a pioneering materials scientist and biomechanical engineer who served as Professor of Materials Engineering at University of Reading, where he collaborated, especially with the late Dr John Landels, on engineering in antiquity. Together with Landels he established a joint degree in Classics and Engineering. 

Visitors play a reconstruction of the Doctor's Grave in the Ure Museum.

Visitors play a reconstruction of the Doctor’s Grave in the Ure Museum.

This year’s Gordon Lecture coincided with a special viewing of the Ure Museum’s temporary exhibit, Locus Ludi. Anyone can play! — with loans from the British Museum, Colchester Museum, Museum of Reading, and University of Reading collections — on display until the end of November. In the Ure Museum, visitors also had a chance to play a full-size reconstruction of The Doctor’s Game made by Giles Cattermole, a local engineer and craftsman.

Poster for Tim Penn talkMembers of the public are also encouraged to join us for another games-related lecture — More than just fun and games: Why study board games in Roman society? — to be delivered by Dr Tim Penn (currently at University of Oxford), on 22 November at 18:00 in Edith Morley G44. Please cntact ure@reading.ac.uk to RSVP.

Launch of a new Ure Museum exhibition

Posted on by

We are delighted to announce a new exhibition— Locus Ludi: Anyone can play!—on display at the Ure Museum from 6 September until 30 November, 2023. Image of ancient game pieces from the Ure Museum
This new exhibition, inspired by the European Research Council funded project Locus Ludi: The Cultural Fabric of Play and Games in Classical Antiquity, led by Professor Véronique Dasen, is an opportunity to explore the rich collections relating to games and play in antiquity that are available not only at the Ure Museum but at other UK museums. The exhibition is co-curated by Jayne Holly (Ure Assistant Curator) and Summer Courts (one of our PhD candidates) and benefits particularly from Summer’s expertise in ancient games. We are most grateful to Colchester and Ipswich Museums, Reading Museum, The British Museum and the University of Reading’s Special Collections for the loan of important artefacts from their collections. Han

Another highlight is the game pieces and other contents of the Stanway Doctor’s Grave, a first-century AD tomb discovered by archaeologists in Stanway, Essex, in 1996. (NB you may have heard that ‘Doctor’ referred also as  ‘The Druid of Colchester’, for indeed it is unclear whether he was Celtic, Roman, or other, Druid or even doctor. Nontheless he was buried with a unique gameboard that still baffles experts. You can learn more about it with this video made by the Panoply Vase Animation Project (created with support from the University of Reading’s Friends and Arts Committee) and of course by visiting the exhibition in the Ure Museum!

We have planned several exciting activities and outreach events to coincide with this exhibition. All are welcome but please note that bookings are required for the first two events:

 

Prof. Ian Rutherford elected Fellow of the British Academy

Posted on by

Prof. Ian RutherfordThe British Academy, the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences, today announces the election of Ian Rutherford, our Professor of Classics at Reading, as a Fellow of the British Academy. He is one of 52 new UK Fellows who together exemplify a breadth of SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts for People and the Economy) disciplines. This prestigious accolade is due recognition of Ian’s prolific research in ancient Greek poetry,  ancient religion, especially pilgrimage, and  contact between early Greece and other cultures, particularly ancient Anatolia (Türkiye) and Egypt. He has published four monographs, nine (co-)edited volumes, and over 100 articles. A strong believer in the benefits of research-led teaching, Ian regularly teaches these subjects to our Department’s UG and PG cohorts.

Professor Ian Rutherford’s election gives Reading Classics two Fellows of the British Academy (FBA), the other being Professor Eleanor Dickey, making it the only Classics department outside Oxford and Cambridge to have more than one Fellow in post. While Reading’s Classics Department is relatively small—e.g. the smallest Classics unit submitted to the most recent REF—the presence of two FBAs in post is a strong indication of its research excellence and international recognition. The British Academy elects only one or two scholars per subject per year, after a rigorous evaluation from internationally recognised scholars in each discipline.

Congratulations to Ian for this well deserved recognition of his outstanding contributions to scholarship.

In the shadow of Hippolytos: Classical studies in honour of Professor Barbara E. Goff

Posted on by

Woman sacrificing on cup in Toledo Museum of ArtTo celebrate the work of our esteemed friend, colleague and Co-head of Department, Prof. Barbara Goff, we have planned a one-day conference in her honour, on the cusp of her retirement, Friday 22nd September 2023. We have assembled an international cadre of her colleagues, collaborators, (former) students and other associates to discuss the diverse range of inclusive and innovative Classical studies on which she herself has contributed so greatly to scholarship in our and related academic fields. The conference’s four themes, which engage with aspects of her teaching and scholarship are the following:

  • Drama, Theory, History
  • A Sporting Life
  • Broad(er) Classics
  • Re-roo/uting Classics

We are delighted to announce that we will be joined also by Dr Stella Keramida from University of Reading’s Department of Film, Theatre, and Television, who with her students is preparing a performance of (some of) Trojan Women. 

Everyone is invited to join us — whether in person or online — to celebrate Prof. Goff on this august occasion, but please sign up here. Please do not hesitate to contact doukissa.kamini@reading.ac.uk for further details or if you have any questions.

Amy Smith, Dania Kamini and Oliver Baldwin

The full programme is linked here.

Remembering Prof. Em. Jane F. Gardner (1934-2023)

Posted on by

Reading’s Department of Classics held a memorial for the late Professor Emeritus Jane F. Gardner on April 26th. Jane was a landmark of the Department for many decades, not only because of the length of her employment (from 1963 to her retirement in 1999), but also because of her strong character and her utter commitment to the Reading Classics community on all its levels, from undergraduates to professors. Long after her retirement, Jane continued to come in to visit colleagues and attend research seminars, even when her declining mobility necessitated the use of a wheelchair. It was therefore wholly fitting that members of the Department – including those who have moved on to other posts, or retired – came together to celebrate her life, work, and many qualities.

The programme from the event (designed by Ure volunteer and graphic designer Matthew Knight), which can be found here, combined personal reminiscence with academic reflection, and covered the many facets of Jane’s long career: Roman historian, specialist in Roman law, Curator of the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology, and expert referee of book manuscripts for Cambridge University Press. It opened with a Latin encomium, written and beautifully read by our Professor Eleanor Dickey, a distinguished practitioner of spoken Latin. The text of the encomium is included in the programme; Jane would have much enjoyed its combination of deep respect and affectionate levity.

This combination marked the whole event, especially the drinks reception which followed the formal presentations, an opportunity for reminiscence and for people to swap their favourite Jane stories. I overheard many laughing accounts of her irascibility, but also even more numerous stories of her generosity – with her time and her expertise, directed into helping students, junior colleagues, and Classicists in other Universities who approached her for advice on Roman law.

The success of the gathering was greatly enhanced by the help of our student volunteers, Shona Carter-Griffiths, Jacinta Hunter and Daisy Roffe. Also essential to the smooth running of the whole memorial was doctoral researcher Edward Ross, who provided IT support and also arranged the music which played quietly at the start of the gathering and during the reception. It was Mozart, at Jane’s own request: ‘Not too frivolous … but not too gloomy either!’ was her not-entirely-helpful stipulation. Finally, it is important to note that the presentations were recorded by Daisy Roffe; once the recording has been edited and captioned, we will make it available for those unable to attend the event, or indeed wishing to relive it.

Finally, there was a third element to the event: the launch of a temporary exhibition on Jane’s life, in the Ure Museum (where it can still be viewed), whose creation was led by Assistant Curator Jayne Holly. Central to this exhibition was a number of pictures from Jane’s not unimportant collection of art, on temporary loan. These include works by Jenny Halstead and Terry Frost, reflecting Jane’s commitment not only to art (she was a longstanding Friend of the Royal Academy, and a great lover of galleries and exhibitions while her health allowed her to visit them), but also her interest in Reading’s life and culture. Many UoR academics live in Oxford or London, justifiably drawn to the proximity of first-rate libraries, but Jane settled in Lower Earley and stayed there until the day before she died. For this reason, we were especially glad that several of her neighbours were able to join us for the memorial.

Students get paid to do research

Posted on by

We are looking forward to having lots of undergraduate research collaborators this summer, thanks to University of Reading’s UROP—Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme. This is an amazing opportunity for our talented undergraduates to get paid for a 6-week experience, usually between their 2nd & 3rd years of study, doing real research alongside their teachers. In each case the research should result in academically rigorous published outputs. Classics benefits most years from this opportunity, but competition is stiff, both for getting the project funded and for choosing the lucky student from among those who apply. This year we have secured funding for three of our projects, namely:

Athenian Festival ware in the Ure Museum. Collect and analyse examples in Reading’s Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology of black-figure ceramics created and used as festival ware in ancient Athens, as a testbed for a larger project—Immanence and Innovation—amassing and analysing evidence of such ceramics from international collections. Now open to 1st year students, updated deadline for applications is 22-May-2023.

In the Company of Monsters: New Visions, Ancient Myths. This project uses contemporary visual art to investigate the power of ancient mythology to engage modern audiences and to explore contemporary themes of identity and diversity. The student will research and create inclusive text to accompany a research-led exhibition at Reading Museum.

Public interactions with Lowbury Hill. Working under the umbrella of the Mymerian project (https://research.reading.ac.uk/mymerian/) we seek to gather, analyse, and interpret trends in modern and contemporary public perceptions of the archaeology and history of Lowbury Hill, Oxfordshire, through research in archives and print media.

Interested 2nd year students are encouraged to peruse the UROP placements available this year: indeed students are encouraged to apply to UROPs from other departments, if they have the right skills and knowledge. The main UROP page and the pages for each project indicate the application procedure, but all applications from interested students are due before 3 April 2023 (Athenian Festival ware UROP application now open until 22-May-2023)

Lowbury Hill mystery

Posted on by

The work of two of our PhD students concerning the mystery surrounding the remains of two Early Medieval persons buried at Lowbury Hill, Oxfordshire, has come to public prominence this month as we prepare for a full osteological analysis of their remains.  The Lowbury duo were discovered by Donald Atkinson, a research fellow from Reading’s Classics Department, in his 1913-14 excavations at the site, which inspired the Ure Museum’s curator Annie Ure, then a student. The pair—a woman and a man—were then displayed together in a two-part glass case in University College Reading’s Museum of History and Archaeology, a precursor to the Ure Museum.  Since the 1920s their remains fell into obscurity. Subsequent analysis of the male, discovered within an Early Medieval barrow, suggests he was a seventh-century warrior who lived in Cornwall or western Ireland before being buried on Lowbury Hill. Since 2017 his remains, along with his elaborate grave goods—including a sword, shield, enamelled spearhead, knife, shears, a bronze hanging bowl and a bone comb—have been on display at the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock. Remains of the woman, who had been buried in line with the wall of a Roman-era enclosure on the hilltop, are normally stored in Standlake. A partial analysis suggests she reached the age of ca. 40 and was buried between 550 to 650 AD. Because she was buried without grave items, little else is known about her.

The Oxfordshire County Council has announced the removal of the male from their museum, in preparation for Summer Courts’ osteological analysis of both individuals, to be undertaken at the Cranfield Forensics Institute, under the supervision of Dr Sophie Beckett, one of her PhD supervisors. Her research is co-supervised by Reading’s Professor Amy Smith and Angie Bolton (Oxfordshire Museum Service) and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via the South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership Collaborative Doctoral Award. Then the team will send samples to Germany for analysis in collaboration with Professor Stephan Schiffels at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Look for another press release in the coming days as Summer begins her analysis.

At the same time the local community has now become interested in the project through a display at the Goring Public Library, accompanied by a series of public events. Seongmee Yoon, another one of our PhD students, co-supervised by Prof. Smith and Dr Rhi Smith (Museum Studies, UoR), has taken this opportunity to study public perceptions of the site, the mysterious duo, and Anglo-Saxons, as part of her museological research. The entire team enjoyed the hospitality of Goring’s Catholic Church this Wednesday night when a sold-out audience heard presentations by Summer and Angie, followed by a poetry reading by Amy. As Summer said, “The study has given us the chance to explore a fascinating site with a thrilling history while applying several archaeological approaches and working with an invested and excited local community.”

More information on the research can be found at the project website: research.reading.ac.uk/mymerian

Prof. Rosalind Thomas delivers the 12th Annual Percy N. Ure Lecture

Posted on by

The Department of Classics at Reading is delighted to welcome Prof. Rosalind Thomas to deliver its 12th Annual Ure Lecture. For this annual lecture, which celebrates the work of our first Professor of Classics, Prof. Percy N. Ure, we invite a preeminent scholar to deliver a public address on a topic of relevance to Percy Ure’s wide range of academic interests. This year Prof. Rosalind Thomas – Professor of Greek History, Dyson-Macgregor Fellow, Jowett Lecturer and Tutor in Ancient History at Balliol College, Oxford University – will deliver a talk entitled ‘Polycrates assigns a mother’: Greek Tyranny in proverb, collective memory and the local ‘polis histories’. The Greek tyrannies of the archaic period were the stuff of legend and folktale (or at least that dominates our literary sources), combined with narratives about their downfall fostered by the anti-tyrant feelings of later generations. Polycrates, tyrant of Samos (late 6th c.) was remembered through particularly vivid and colourful tales, vignettes and proverbs (as in the title), through which others were associated with cruelty and indulgent excess. It is hard to understand the social, political or economic impetus behind such tyrannies (Ure offered one famous theory), or to match the magnificence and building projects with the accounts later Greeks wanted to tell about them. This paper examines some of the most interesting accounts in the later ‘polis histories’ of their own local tyrant(s), and – with an eye to Herodotus and other comparisons – asks whether tyrants were an embarrassment or a paradoxical source of price generations later. It also examines what these later accounts might reveal about the collective memories of their archaic past, if not the archaic reality.

The lecture will start be at 4pm on 25th January, in the Van Emden Theatre in the Edith Morley building, on the University of Reading Campus. All are welcome to join us for this public lecture but please register  in advance at https://www.store.reading.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/faculty-of-arts-humanities-social-science/dept-of-classics/12th-annual-percy-ure-lecture. For any further questions, please contact Prof. Amy C. Smith, Joint Head of Department.

New exhibition: Black African Authors in the Roman Empire

Posted on by

In celebration of Black History Month we are delighted to announce the launch of a physical exhibition in the Classics Department hallway (pictured below). Reading University’s Classics Department is committed to decolonising the curriculum and challenging our preconceptions of the non-white world. Our students Chloe Gardner (BA Hons. 2021) and Edward Gregory (current 3rd-year undergraduate) created an online exhibit about Black African Authors in the Roman Empire in the wake of the University’s launch of its Race Equality Review on 24 May 2021. COVID-19 restrictions did not permit a physical exhibit at that time so we have re-animated this project here.

BHThe three authors featured here are ancient African writers: Tertullian, a Berber; Terence, a Libyan; and Apuleius, a Numidian. These authors wrote broadly and across different genres, but each touched on the experiences of their people, even if in a satirical manner.

TertullianThroughout history, black and African voices have been silenced systematically to forge a narrative of white supremacy. By casting Western-minority groups as savage or uneducated natives, collective memory now recalls groups of people subdued and modernized by the West. Traditional practices regarding research and interpretation in the Classics discipline tend to reaffirm and strengthen the misconceptions associated with this flawed and dangerous narrative. The field of Classics has been dominated by white, male voices. Through telling stories relatable to them they created an echo chamber of information on the classical world. Perpetuating the idea of a white-washed ancient past is harmful, however, to all. In ignoring data and evidence for a society that was far more influenced by the East and South than was sometimes thought, Westerners have lost or hidden a wealth of knowledge, understanding and answers.

To read more about each of these north African authors and a suggested bibliography see our online exhibition at research.reading.ac.uk/curiosi/black-history.